Tristan
Thanks for that irrelevant rant based on the assumption that we can create wealth out of nothing by passing laws.

But would you please answer the question I asked you: "Do you think the result [of tax policy that] you criticise is worse than it would be in the absence of such progressivity, that is, if you actually respected the principle of equality under law?

Also, if government is able to bring about optimal conditions by forced redistributions, what is the limiting factor, if any, to this wondrous ability? What objections do you have to full socialism, by which I mean state ownership of the means of production? What justification could there ever be for any private property?

I think this whole debate needs to be seen in a wider context - the shift of wealth to the owners of capital over the last 30 years as a response to declining or stagnating profit rates.

The carbon tax fits into that - it is a GST on carbon whose main effect is precisely to cut the consumption of working class people. Talk of compensation is a furphy - the compensation won't cover fully the cost of the tax on average workers.

A tax on the profits of the polluters, and strict price controls preventing them passing on the impact, and a concerted spending program on renewable energy and retraining at full wages, would be a start.

Taxing economic rents - 'super profits' - would provide the revenue base for doing that. It would make no adverse impact on investment and jobs since all you are taxing is returns over and above that necessary to get capital to invest.

Between 2006 and 2008 40% of big business paid no income tax and that figure looks like it has increased since then, with the Commissioner of Taxation expressing real concern about the business tax gap - the difference between the economic returns to capital and the tax they are contributing. While profits are going up tax paid is going down.

The pathetic little MRRT, like the slightly less pathetic RSPT, was an attempt to distribute value (value that workers create) from a super profitable section of capital to those less profitable through tax cuts. The super co-contributions - about 3% of the proposed revenue - was a sop to give the impression of benefiting workers while really hiding the reality that the rent taxes the Labor governments were proposing were specifically designed to benefit capital as a whole.

This is part of Labor's traditional role of ruling for all capital, not sectional interests.

Tax the rich. No to a carbon tax. Yes to a tax on the profits of the polluters and all of big business. Real programs to develop renewable energy. Green jobs now.

passy "Between 2006 and 2008 40% of big business paid no income tax"

What world do you inhabit where they swap fairy stories like this? Is this some inner city leftists myth we're getting repeated here?

So our tax department did not collect corporate tax from 40% of "big" businesses? What utter rubbish.

You want: "A tax on the yada yada, and strict price controls yada yada a concerted spending program on renewable energy and retraining yada yada."

Price controls, what, a government department to control the price of everything? What a dreamworld, paid for by what, yet more taxes? So thousands of public servants controlling the price of everything? Seriously do you think that's possible when we can't even manage GST on imports under $1K?

If businesses do not make a reasonable profit, people will withdraw their capitol (investors), like your super fund will. Will you instruct your super fund to invest for no profit for your retirement?

Concerted spending on renewables which is picking winners, what if you pick the wrong ones? Who pays, well not you obviously, it's the "rich taxpayers and the polluters" who will pay, correct?

You want to retrain people on full salaries, to do what exactly? Thousands of people being managed by government to be retrained for thousands of new careers, what careers? Created by whom, the ALP?

The reality is most companies run on narrow margins, if you tax them that margin, they shut down, sack everyone.

Business is not a bottomless pit of available funds to be taxed.

The mythical Big Polluters, a green/ALP tool to demonize industry, who will pass on costs, or go under, you decide.

If you don't pay the additional price, you can't expect business to operate for less than they can charge.

This is naive, you can't have governments bigger than industry and survive, you reach as stage where your costs outweigh industry and people's capability to fund with more tax.

Passy,

I think Tristan may have taken a break from this debate. Understandable, given the bashing we've given him - and rightly so.

You've made some good points, but I have a few differences.

I believe what we need more than anything else is jobs. So many are going overseas - call centres, IT, manufacturing, value-adding. That, and foreign ownership of more and more of Oz industry and production - including farming - means something is out of kilter.

A number of our OLO commentators mentioned the growing number of "imported" welfare recipients - boat people, family-reunion immigrants etc - but we also have quite a few locals who can't get a job. Why can this be, if we have a skills shortage, and keep importing overseas-trained workers?

Hence, anything which threatens jobs is bad, and anything which builds jobs is good. (Can we all agree that having a job is a good thing, even if you'd rather be on welfare?) (Single parents with babies aside - though day-care beckons.)

Problems then. Deficiencies in our education system, lack of industry competitiveness, lack of innovation, of R&D, of incentives. Do we have the subsidies used overseas (US,EU)? The grants or tax-breaks to build new industry? The forward vision?

To Tors. Carbon tax won't create jobs (except in bureaucracy), investment in new technology will - now, and into the future. Mining Super Tax won't create jobs - will make big miners less competitive, or direct them to invest overseas.

Solutions. Standardise mining royalties (all sectors), and make it Federal, rather than State, revenue - as part of the overall tax bag to be redistributed at COAG. Standardise all tax streams to remove anomalies - land tax etc. Develop a national infrastructure and services plan with the States/Territories - and ensure it is implemented. Develop a forward development plan with industry leaders, for national R&D and Innovation, and use the Infrastructure Fund to implement it. Standardise the education system nationwide, pay teachers more, make standards high. Standardise the health services sector and aged-care.

Make Oz more competitive, more lean, and more hungry.

LEGO refers to an:

"ever expanding welfare state full of foreigners [which] is not going to ganrner any popular support...because ordinary, working class taxpayers like myself know that we are "the rich" which the bleeding hearts are going to rob."

Appealing to racism and fear has alway been the device of the far right to divide the working class against itself; and as a distraction against the injustices the Right inflicts on ordinary people. But despite fear-mongering, only about 3,000 refugees arrive by boat in Australia every year. But formal immigration - under the Conservatives too - has been over 100,000/year.

Also I see no proof of his (and 'rpg's') claim 'the rich' are 'ordinary workers' with ordinary wealth and income.

Specifically I suggest heavier taxation of the top 30% or 35% income group. (ie: narrow enough to be fair and politically sustainable, broad enough to net enough money for critical gaps in services (health/aged care, education roads & public transport etc) and welfare. There are more and more millionaires in Australia (who LEGO&rpg think are 'ordinary' - yet provide no proof.) But ACOSS estimated recently "2.2 million people in Australia were living in poverty and 105,000 were homeless". See:
http://www.acoss.org.au/media/release/Inequality_is_growing_in_Australia_ACOSS

The millionaires are not 'ordinary people'; many (not all) would be able to delegate to financial advisors without needing to work at all; but hundreds of thousands of Australians do work hard - in return for poverty wages.

ALSO CRUCIALLY - there has been no response to my point that collective consumption of health, aged care, education - and social housing - actually helps ordinary Australian workers. Collective consumption simply being more efficient, partly because of the consequent market power (eg: PBS); partly more competitive government borrowing rates re: infrastucture; public housing effects on supply and hence affordability in the broader sector- and so on... If these are not provided socially then they need to be consumed privately - but if the consequence is that people pay MORE via private consumption, then what is gained by cutting taxes and social expenditure?

Ok - first just a correction - the points I raise at the of my last relate not just to collective consumption - but also public provision of infrastructure. (hence a lower cost of borrowing)

but re: 'state ownership of the means of production' - there are a number of points.

The first point is that there are benefits as well as drawbacks to markets and competition, and competition necessarily means a role for private ownership. (except theoretically in international trade -eg: the USSR competed in global markets)

The benefits of competition include innovation, efficiency and responsiveness to market signals. Competition also drives national economies & enterprises to focus on their natural strengths - driving efficiency in the *global* economy.

The drawbacks can include focus only on share value maximisation translating into discrimination against less profitable markets which nonetheless are marked by a legitimate need. (eg: broadband for the bush, liberal education for everyone etc)

Other possible issues are

*escalating rates of exploitation especially where there is a lack of labour market regulation; 'letting labour markets clear' may sound good in theory, but try living on $6/hour

*market force can also drive monopolisation and hence abuse of market power

* the public sector has certain advantages - again including cheaper borrowing rates, and the potential to provide natural monpolies (eg: infrastructre) without abuse of market power.

* control over markets translates into economic AND political power, so there develops an alliance between monopoly capital and national state powers - which turns war into an economic/political tool, and precludes real - democratic and popular - national sovereignty.

Want to say more but have run out of room again...